Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution: II

II

To this must be added the following general consideration.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to
acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we
have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living
in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save
through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on
slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is
always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern
militia—and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland,
for instance—represent the bourgeoisie armed against the
proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary
to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers
in all capitalist countries.

A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the
biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in
face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand”
“disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the
class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of
revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat,
expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics
possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and
are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist
militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the
bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission,
to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will
undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled,
certainly not before.

If the present war rouses among the reactionary Christian socialists,
among the whimpering petty bourgeoisie, only horror and fright,
only aversion to all use of arms, to bloodshed, death, etc., then we must
say: Capitalist society is and has always been horror without end.
If this most reactionary of all wars is now preparing for that society an
end to horror, we have no reason to fall into despair. But the
disarmament “demand”, or more correctly, the dream of disarmament, is,
objectively, nothing but an expression of despair at a time when, as
everyone can see, the bourgeoisie itself is paving the way for the only
legitimate and revolutionary war—civil war against the imperialist
bourgeoisie.

A lifeless theory, some might say, but we would remind them of two
world-historical facts: the role of the trusts and the employment of women
in industry, on the one hand, and the Paris Commune of 1871 and the
December 1905 uprising in Russia, on the other.

The bourgeoisie makes it its business to promote trusts, drive women
and children into the factories, subject them to corruption and suffering,
condemn them to extreme poverty. We do not “demand” such development, we
do not “support” it. We fight it. But how do we fight? We
explain that trusts and the employment of women in industry are
progressive. We do not want a return to the handicraft system, pre-monopoly
capitalism, domestic drudgery for women. Forward through the trusts, etc.,
and beyond them to socialism!

With the necessary changes that arguments is applicable also to the
present militarization of the population. Today the imperialist bourgeoisie
militarizes the youth as well as the adults; tomorrow, it may begin
militarizing the women. Our attitude should be: All the better! Full speed
ahead! For the faster we move, the nearer shall we be to the armed uprising
against capitalism. How can Social-Democrats give way to fear of the
militarization of the youth, etc., if they have not forgotten the example
of the Paris Commune? This is not a “lifeless theory” or a dream. It is a
fact. And it would be a sorry state of affairs indeed if, all the economic
and political facts notwithstanding, Social-Democrats began to doubt that
the imperialist era and imperialist wars must inevitably bring about a
repetition of such facts.

A certain bourgeois observer of the Paris Commune, writing to an
English newspaper in May 1871, said: “If the French nation consisted
entirely of women, what a terrible nation it would be!” Woman and teenage
children fought in the Paris Commune side by side with the men. It will be
no different in the coming battles for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.
Proletarian women will not look on passively as poorly armed or unarmed
workers are shot down by the well-armed forces of the bourgeoisie. They
will take to arms, as they did in 1871, and from the cowed nations of
today—or more correctly, from the present-day labor movement,
disorganized more by the opportunists than by the governments—there will
undoubtedly arise, sooner or later, but with absolute certainty, an
international league of the “terrible nations” of the revolutionary
proletariat.

The whole of social life is now being militarized. Imperialism is a
fierce struggle of the Great Powers for the division and redivision of the
world. It is therefore bound to lead to further militarization in all
countries, even in neutral and small ones. How will proletarian women
oppose this? Only by cursing all war and everything military, only be
demanding disarmament? The women of an oppressed and really revolutionary
class will never accept that shameful role. They will say to their sons:
“You will soon be grown up. You will be given a gun. Take it and learn the
military art properly. The proletarians need this knowledge not to shoot
your brothers, the workers of other countries, as is being done in the
present war, and as the traitors to socialism are telling you to do. They
need it to fight the bourgeoisie of their own country, to put an end to
exploitation, poverty and war, and not by pious wishes, but by defeating
and disarming the bourgeoisie.”

If we are to shun such propaganda, precisely such propaganda, in
connection with the present war, then we had better stop using fine words
about international revolutionary Social-Democracy, the socialist
revolution and war against war.